Saturday, September 21, 2013

We continue to be delighted with the inspiration and wisdom our Carnival of Natural Parenting participants share, and we hope you'll join us for the next carnival in October 2013! (Check out September, August, July, June, May, April, March, January, and summaries of all our 2012 posts and 2011 posts if you missed any.)

Theme: Kids and Technology: What is your stance on screen time? Does your family watch TV? What about computers, tablets, smart phones, and other gadgets? Tell us about your family's practices and goals regarding shows, apps, and other modern-day options.

Deadline: Tuesday, October 1. Fill out the webform (at the link or at the bottom) and email your submission to us by 11:59 p.m. Pacific time: CarNatPar {at} NaturalParentsNetwork.comCarnival date:Tuesday, October 8. Before you post, we will send you an email with a little blurb in html to paste into your submission that will introduce the carnival. You will publish your post on October 8 and email us the link if you haven't done so already. Once everyone's posts are published on October 8 by noon Eastern time, we will send out a finalized list of all the participants' links to generate lots of link love for your site! We'll include full instructions in the email we send before the posting date.

Please do: Write well. Write on topic. Write a brand new post for the carnival. As always, our carnival themes aren't meant to be exclusionary. If your experience doesn't perfectly mesh with the carnival theme, please lend your own perspective. Please also feel free to be creative within the gentle confines of the carnival structure. If you're feeling so inspired, you could write a poem, a photo essay, a scholarly article, or a book review instead of a regular blog post (though those are welcomed, too!), as long as what you write is respectful of the carnival's intent. If you want help determining that ahead of time, please talk with us.

Please don't: Please don't use profanity of the sort that might be offensive to more sensitive readers or their children. Please don't submit irrelevant or argumentative pieces contrary to the principles of natural parenting. You don't have to agree with all our ideals  and certainly you don't have to live up to them all perfectly!  but your submission does have to fit the theme and values of the carnival.

Editors' rights: We reserve the right to edit your piece or suggest edits to you. We reserve the right to courteously reject any submissions that are inappropriate for the carnival. Please also note that since there are two co-hosts on different schedules and conferring over email, our personal response to your submission might seem delayed. Don't be alarmed. We also reserve the right to impose consequences if the responsibilities of the carnival are not fulfilled by the participants.

If you don't have a blog: Contact us (CarNatPar {at} NaturalParentsNetwork.com) about potentially finding you a host blog to guest post. Please write your piece well in advance of the deadline in that case, so we can match you up with someone suitable. But if you really have something amazing to write  why not start your own blog? If you want advice, we find Scribbit's free Blogging in Pink ebook to be a very helpful and down-to-earth guide, for beginners on up.

If you have questions: Please leave a comment or contact us: CarNatPar {at} NaturalParentsNetwork.com

Links to tutorials: Lauren, Dionna, and Dionna's husband, Tom, have written several tutorials for our participants about how to schedule posts in advance, how to determine post URLs in advance, how to edit HTML  all for both Wordpress and Blogger users. For these tutorials and more, please see this handy summary post at LaurenWayne.com.

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Riding the rails with my husband, Crackerdog Sam, and our hobo kids, Mikko Lint Picker (born June 2007), Alrik Irontrousers (born May 2011), and Karsten (born October 2014). Trying every day to parent intentionally and with grace.